NVIDIA was caught somewhat off-guard last year when ATI came up with a rather impressive line of graphics processors that not only were fast but were also priced very competitively. NVIDIA was then forced to heavily slash the pricing of their debuting GeForce GTX 200 products at the time. But it didn't stop there, throughout the rest of year the name of the game was undercutting each other's prices, a game that we must add was very beneficial to consumers. And that's how last year ended, NVIDIA used their older GeForce 9 series to compete at the mainstream level, leaving the newer GTX technology for the high performance graphics. Meanwhile, ATI launched a number of interesting products. - TechSpot

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 Duo GT200b Edition Review

That included the Radeon HD 4870 X2, a dual GPU graphics card that snatched the performance crown from NVIDIA's hands, though ATI didn't ask peanuts for this board at about $550 a piece. Now by sticking two Radeon HD 4870 cards together, ATI created a graphics processing monster that, when supported with proper drivers, was by far the fastest single card solution gamers could get their hands on. Since its release in August of last year the Radeon HD 4870 X2 has run virtually unopposed. Now some five months later, it looks like this is about to change. The GeForce GTX 295 dual GPU video card features 1792MB of memory which corresponds to the memory capacity of two GeForce GTX 260 boards.

However, unlike this Radeon HD 4870 X2 which is literally two Radeon HD 4870 products stuck together, the GeForce GTX 295 seems to be more of a hybrid, sharing specs of both GeForce GTX 260 and GeForce GTX 280 products. The GeForce GTX 295 gets the same core, memory and shader clock speeds as the GeForce GTX 260. Yet its core configuration is more similar to that of a GeForce GTX 280, with each of the two GPU's featuring 240 shaders. Therefore, what we have here is an insanely fast graphics card that should be more than capable of taking on the Radeon HD 4870 X2 and take back the performance crown.

And discussing prices is going to get tricky for the next few weeks considering the GeForce GTX 295 boards have started to appear on retailers immediately at around $500 and price drops from competing products have followed accordingly. The Radeon HD 4870 X2 seems to be selling for about $450, making it roughly the same as buying a pair of Radeon HD 4870 1GB cards. The GeForce GTX 280 pricing, on the other hand has dropped dramatically from the $450-500 range a few weeks ago to less than $350, making for quite a bargain. This heavy drop may be in light of its replacement, the slightly speed bumped GeForce GTX 285.

The balance has now been restored with the introduction of the GeForce GTX 295, giving NVIDIA a weapon to compete for the performance crown. Probably the biggest plus for NVIDIA right now is that they seem to be offering better support for the major games released last year. Current owners of the Radeon HD 4870 X2 can hardly hang their heads in shame as this graphics card has proven to be extremely powerful and competitive with only a few select games where it got trounced by this newly released GeForce GTX 295. Like all multi GPU cards, the GeForce GTX 295 relies heavily on proper driver support.

Overall we are very pleased with the numbers produced by the GeForce GTX 295 and we are even happy about its price. At $500 this is not exactly an affordable product, but given the level of performance the price is fitting. At the other side of the fence you have ATI who have become increasingly aggressive at slashing prices. So far the Radeon HD 4870 X2 has been reduced to $450, with certain rebates taking it closer to $400. At that point you may want to seriously consider what to buy. All that said, if price is no object and you want the most powerful single card solution money can buy, then the GeForce GTX 295 is your poison.